Currently viewing the tag: “history’”
I don’t want to say too much about the debate over increased density in Manhattan because, again, ebook proposal. But one reality check on this whole subject is to note that the population of Manhattan 100 years ago at 2,331,542 people. It then hit a low of 1,428,285 in 1980 and has since then risen back up to 1,629,054.
Back in 1910 there were only 92,228,496 people in the United States. Since that time, the population of the country has more than tripled to 308,745,538. And if you look at Manhattan real estate prices, it’s hardly as if population decline in Manhattan has been driven by a lack of demand for Manhattan housing. Back around 1981 when I was born, things were different. The population of the island was shrinking and large swathes of Manhattan were cheap places to live thanks to the large existing housing stock and the high crime.
New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller’s latest sniping at Fox News garnered some unsympathetic media attention. Keller told a New York college audience March 3 that "I think if you're a regular viewer of Fox News, you're among the most cynical people on planet Earth. I cannot think of a more cynical slogan than 'Fair and Balanced'.”
The Daily Beast media reporter Howard Kurtz questioned Keller’s judgment, but also inaccurately stated that “The executive editor of The New York Times doesn't generally engage in trashing other news organizations. So Bill Keller caused quite a stir when he unloaded on Fox News.”
In fact, Keller has eagerly and consistently attacked his rivals at Fox News since he replaced Howell Raines (who has also viciously attacked Fox News) as executive editor in July 2003.
Here’s Keller in the April 25, 2010 Times, reviewing a biography of publisher Henry Luce.
By the time of his death, in 1967, that consensus had been torn asunder, and today there is no vehicle, no voice with the coherent power of Luce’s magazines in their heyday. The last of his breed of media tycoon is a 79-year-old Australian billionaire whose impact has been more corrosive than cohesive.
That "Australian billionaire" would be Rupert Murdoch, who, for the record, is an American citizen.
Here’s Keller from the week of January 30, 2009, providing a satirical “day-in-the-life” vignette in an online Q&A session at nytimes.com:
Lunch at the Four Seasons is always a high point. Today it's my weekly tête-à-tête with Bill O'Reilly. He's really not the Neanderthal blowhard he plays on TV. He's totally in on the joke.
Here's Keller on an extended anti-Fox rant on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal,” on September 1, 2004:
Fox is an interesting question. There is a kind of unspoken non-aggression pact among media that they don't beat up on each other. Fox tends to be the exception in our business. You know, John Carroll, who is the executive editor, basically holds my job at the Los Angeles Times, gave a speech in the spring, and most of which was devoted to Fox News. And in there he argued that what they do isn't really journalism, it's pseudo-journalism, and he defined a number of characteristics that meet his standard of what is journalism, including making a real effort to correct your mistakes when you are confronted with them. And he said that Fox doesn't meet that test. I have to say that, as somebody who watches Fox from time to time, I agree with him. I think there's a lot more heat than light generated by Fox News and it's obviously, it's a free country, you know, they can put what they want on the air, but it feels like it's my business, because I think there's a general cheapening of the discourse, the political discourse in this country and I think Fox is a contributor to that.
More recently, Keller appeared on a January 31, 2010 panel with Marvin Kalb at George Washington University.
I think the effect of Fox News on American public life has been to create a level of cynicism about the news in general. I think it has contributed to the sense that ‘they’re all just, you know, out there with a political agenda, Fox is just more overt about it.’ And I think that’s unhealthy. I think Fox has also raised, we have had a lot of talk since the Gabby Giffords murder, attempted murder, about civility in our national discourse, and I, you know, make no connection between the guy who shot those people in Tucson and the national discourse. But it is true that the national discourse is more polarized and strident than it has been in the past, and to some extent, I would lay that at the feet of Rupert Murdoch, yes.
New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller’s latest sniping at Fox News garnered some unsympathetic media attention. Keller told a New York college audience March 3 that "I think if you're a regular viewer of Fox News, you're among the most cynical people on planet Earth. I cannot think of a more cynical slogan than 'Fair and Balanced'.”
The Daily Beast media reporter Howard Kurtz questioned Keller’s judgment, but also inaccurately stated that “The executive editor of The New York Times doesn't generally engage in trashing other news organizations. So Bill Keller caused quite a stir when he unloaded on Fox News.”
In fact, Keller has eagerly and consistently attacked his rivals at Fox News since he replaced Howell Raines (who has also viciously attacked Fox News) as executive editor in July 2003.
Here’s Keller in the April 25, 2010 Times, reviewing a biography of publisher Henry Luce.
By the time of his death, in 1967, that consensus had been torn asunder, and today there is no vehicle, no voice with the coherent power of Luce’s magazines in their heyday. The last of his breed of media tycoon is a 79-year-old Australian billionaire whose impact has been more corrosive than cohesive.
That "Australian billionaire" would be Rupert Murdoch, who, for the record, is an American citizen.
Here’s Keller from the week of January 30, 2009, providing a satirical “day-in-the-life” vignette in an online Q&A session at nytimes.com:
Lunch at the Four Seasons is always a high point. Today it's my weekly tête-à-tête with Bill O'Reilly. He's really not the Neanderthal blowhard he plays on TV. He's totally in on the joke.
Here's Keller on an extended anti-Fox rant on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal,” on September 1, 2004:
Fox is an interesting question. There is a kind of unspoken non-aggression pact among media that they don't beat up on each other. Fox tends to be the exception in our business. You know, John Carroll, who is the executive editor, basically holds my job at the Los Angeles Times, gave a speech in the spring, and most of which was devoted to Fox News. And in there he argued that what they do isn't really journalism, it's pseudo-journalism, and he defined a number of characteristics that meet his standard of what is journalism, including making a real effort to correct your mistakes when you are confronted with them. And he said that Fox doesn't meet that test. I have to say that, as somebody who watches Fox from time to time, I agree with him. I think there's a lot more heat than light generated by Fox News and it's obviously, it's a free country, you know, they can put what they want on the air, but it feels like it's my business, because I think there's a general cheapening of the discourse, the political discourse in this country and I think Fox is a contributor to that.
More recently, Keller appeared on a January 31, 2010 panel with Marvin Kalb at George Washington University.
I think the effect of Fox News on American public life has been to create a level of cynicism about the news in general. I think it has contributed to the sense that ‘they’re all just, you know, out there with a political agenda, Fox is just more overt about it.’ And I think that’s unhealthy. I think Fox has also raised, we have had a lot of talk since the Gabby Giffords murder, attempted murder, about civility in our national discourse, and I, you know, make no connection between the guy who shot those people in Tucson and the national discourse. But it is true that the national discourse is more polarized and strident than it has been in the past, and to some extent, I would lay that at the feet of Rupert Murdoch, yes.
Over the weekend, David Sirota wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post, in which he opined that, “the 80’s just won’t go away.” There is money in nostalgia. But there is more than that:
This collective deja vu moment is part coincidence, part commodified nostalgia and part impulse to rehash successful old political and entertainment brands. But the similarities between today and the 1980s also reflect a country now run by those who came of age in that decade – people whose worldviews were molded by an era that began with a Chrysler bailout and ended with foreign students protesting dictatorship in a distant square.
In the minds of many of today’s leaders — at least those in the Republican Party — the Age of Reagan was a Golden Age, where America emerged from the doom and confusion of the seventies, personified by Jimmy Carter, into “Morning in America.” Like Reagan himself — who wanted to return to a pre-Depression America and a roaring economy presided over by Calvin Coolidge — today’s Republicans want to return to the optimism and the good times they associate with The Gipper.
The problem is that their memory — like Reagan’s — is highly selective. Ronald Reagan came to office endorsing supply side economics — until David Stockman announced quite publicly that the numbers didn’t add up. The president quietly changed course. Reagan railed at the size of government and the deficit, while allowing both to increase substantially. It’s true he did not become entangled in the Middle East — in fact, he withdrew Marines from Lebanon. He did, however, lead a successful invasion of another country — Grenada. And, rather than cutting back social security, he increased payroll taxes to ensure its solvency.
But he left it to others to deal with the consequences of his signature policies. To George Bush Sr. he left the Savings and Loan Debacle. Bush established the Resolution Trust Corporation and actually prosecuted the high rollers behind the savings and loan mess. Bush also increased taxes to restore fiscal balance — a wise move. But to howls of treachery, he lost the next election. Then, of course, there was Ollie North and Iran Contra. And, to Reagan’s credit, but unthinkable to some — particularly to the Tea Partiers of his own day — he sat down and did business with The Evil Empire.
Ronald Reagan — like the America he loved — has been mythologized. The problem with mythologizing the past is that you can’t learn from it. The golden glow surrounding it makes it impossible to see its hard edges, its tragedies and its stupidities. Today, from Wisconsin to Washington, Republicans have been captured by a myth. In such moments, history becomes destiny.
Canada’s Owen Gray grew up in Montreal, where he received a B. A. from Concordia University. After crossing the border and completing a Master’s degree at the University of North Carolina, he returned to Canada, married, raised a family and taught high school for 32 years. Now retired, he lives — with his wife and youngest son — on the northern shores of Lake Ontario. This post is cross posted from his blog.
As Congressman Peter King ended hearings on a pertinent subject, danger signs are everywhere. Like Europe in the 1930s, America is sleepwalking towards world war. Our leaders and most of the mainstream press overlook or excuse them, or admonish those who spotlight the portents. Racists! Bigots. “Islam is a religion of peace,” they exhort. “The majority don’t want Jihad.”
Meanwhile, Militant Islam surges, infiltrating Europe in ever-widening enclaves, changing its Western culture and laws, threatening non-Muslim citizens. Its soldiers wage war in Africa and the Middle East, especially against Christians and Jews, the religions of the large majority of people it threatens. They behead and maim innocents and use their young as suicide bombers.
In the US, with their insulated communities growing, they’ve drastically changed cities like Detroit, Mich., where the Muslim call to worship is now a common sound. They push for dictatorial Sharia Law which outlaws homosexuals, woman’s rights, and dissenters – precisely the societal reforms their naive non-Muslim defenders champion.
Yes, the majority of Muslims seem peaceful, law-abiding and, in America, loyal. Yes, they may occasionally tip the police to wrong doing. But as Paul E. Marek, a Canadian blogger whose parents luckily awoke from Europe’s sleep to escape the Nazis, wrote: Peace-loving Muslims are largely “irrelevant…The fact is the fanatics rule Islam…It is the fanatics…who wage any one of 50 shooting wars world wide…systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa,” recruit as fighters treasonous or disgruntled Americans in Islamic gatherings, on the internet, and in prisons.
What if China, another growing threat, allies with Militant Islam? America could find itself isolated, just as Britain was in the beginning of World War II – but without a rescuer as the US was to England.
If you don’t think such an unlikely union can occur, you don’t know history.
Prior to the US allying with the Soviet Union in World War II, Nazi Germany and communist Russia, arch enemies, became sudden and unexpected partners in conquering Poland. Common foes and interests unite disparate elements. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” is both an Arab and Chinese saying. China is now arming, flexing its muscles. Why, when we owe them so much money, would they challenge? Like the skinny kid who gains muscles working out, newfound power begs testing.
It could happen.
Since 1979, beginning with the US embassy takeover in Iran, Radical Islam has increasingly targeted America. In the succeeding decades – including the bombing of the marine barracks in Lebanon, the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland, culminating in the horrific attack on the World Trade Center in New York City – it’s warriors have killed over 4000 Americans. Half that died at Pearl Harbor but the Japanese attack instantly awoke in Americans what had to be done.
Yet, what’s been the response to the Militant Islamic threat – tentative, measured, tit-for-tat actions that have done little to nothing to halt its advance and such actions have basically disappeared under the Obama Administration other than to continue waging a war that the previous president started. With borders remaining open, refusal to name the enemy beyond one of its many manifestations – Al Qaeda – and continually apologizing for past actions, this administration seems more concerned with placating the threat than defeating it.
The one president who got mad and decisive, George W. Bush, yielded to political correctness and muddled things by terming his effort the “War on Terror.” But terrorism is a tactic, not an enemy. As “undocumented worker” takes the meaning out of “illegal immigrant,” War on Terror obfuscates the mission. How can one defeat an enemy if one doesn’t know who the enemy is? Do you shoot a textbook, round up separatists, look for frightful acts?
Meanwhile we go deeper in debt, undercutting our economic strength. We restrict oil exploration making the country – and our defense – more dependent on the Middle East – the very cradle of our enemy, Militant Islam. How will our tanks roll if we run out of oil? Or oil is denied us at a crucial time against a threat. Yes, we have a reserve for that. But our foolish administration is already talking about using it for domestic shortage.
Perhaps most seriously we are cutting our defense. For instance, we’ve already halted the production of the F-22, the most advanced jet fighter plane in the world. In the hands of a good pilot, it can beat anything flown against it. If the US got in a shooting war with China, the hordes of planes they could fly against it might overwhelm us. The new jet fighters they are fielding, might soon match the F-22.
In addition, the culture of political correctness that now pervades the Pentagon is chasing warriors from our services. An example of the culture was provided by Army Chief of Staff, Gen. George Casey, in his reaction to the shootings of some 40 fellow soldiers and civilians at Ft. Hood, Tex., by a Moslem-American officer. Among the general’s first public statements was, “It would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as well.”
Diversity?
What do you think General Patton would have said?
In by-gone days, admirals and generals nearly revolted when their primary purpose – national security – was threatened. Today, US military leadership has largely buckled to their purview being used as an instrument of social change. Pentagon officials have acquiesced almost without a whimper to repeal of Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell. Sensitivity training and reduced physical requirements for women are standard. But the role of the military, to be brutally honest, is to smash and kill things, not right society’s wrongs. When the shooting starts, only might is right, and combat warriors who will be sorely needed are exiting because of the change.
An air force wing commander recently quit because higher ups wanted to change the fighting culture he’d fostered. He wrote, “I am tired of fighter pilots suffering at the hands of…pencil pushing…ladder climbing opportunists…who think they are leaders just because the Air Force is currently more interested in feelings and sexual orientation than fighting. At this rate we may lose the next real war.”
It’s a perilous path we’re on and our leaders don’t seem to know it.
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) made a high profile trip to New Hampshire today as part of a potential 2012 presidential run, but the tea party favorite, who often refers to the early days of the Republic in speeches and media appearances, embarrassingly mangled basic American history, incorrectly stating that the battles of Lexington and Concord, and the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock, to have occurred in New Hampshire, instead of Massachusetts:
“What I love about New Hampshire and what we have in common is our extreme love for liberty,” the potential GOP presidential candidate said. “You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord. And you put a marker in the ground and paid with the blood of your ancestors the very first price that had to be paid to make this the most magnificent nation that has ever arisen in the annals of man in 5,000 years of recorded history.” […]
“I’m thankful that you are the first in the nation state because you are the liberty state,” Bachmann said. “That is your charge. You keep that baton of liberty. You’ve done it very well for almost 20 generations from the time the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, and I’m sure the very first one came up to New Hampshire and said, ‘This is where I want to be.’”
Of course, as the school children in attendance at the speech could likely tell her, the Battles of Lexington and Concord that sparked the American revolution in 1775, and the Pilgrims’ landing, took place in Massachusetts, not New Hampshire, “but Bachmann did not correct her error when she referenced the battles again later in her speech.” Ironically, The Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire, which hosted the event, handed out pocket-sized copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution “on a table a few feet from where Bachmann spoke.”
This is hardly the first time Bachmann has flubbed the country’s basic history. She has repeatedly pronounced that America was founded on diversity and guaranteed freedom for all from its beginning, completely whitewashing the existence of slavery from America’s past. In January, CNN host Anderson Cooper lambasted Bachmann for “flunking history,” saying her diversity comments were “either a deliberate rewriting of our history, or signs that she has a shaky grasp on our history.”
Peter Smith applauds the ad for Sarah Vowell's latest book, Unfamiliar Fishes:
It's a novel use of a book trailer and certainly made me curious about how a hamburger dish topped with gravy and a fried egg that originated in 1949 (apparently as a snack for teenagers who were tired of American sandwiches but didn't want to bother with time-consuming Asian foods) relates to a new book examining the impact New England missionaries had on the [Hawaiian] island in the 19th century.
Michelle Bachmann’s abstract reverence for the founding fathers doesn’t seem to extend to knowledge of some extremely basic revolutionary facts:
"What I love about New Hampshire and what we have in common is our extreme love for liberty," the potential GOP presidential candidate said. "You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord. And you put a marker in the ground and paid with the blood of your ancestors the very first price that had to be paid to make this the most magnificent nation that has ever arisen in the annals of man in 5,000 years of recorded history."
Ah yes. Hardly a man is now alive who remembers the midnight ride of Paul Revere up the Seacoast.
Read more here.
Overnight, we celebrate the biannual ritual of resetting all our clocks so as to save daylight. Oddly, the amount of daylight continues to heed its own rhythms.
Howard Mansfield explains the origins of this odd custom (“Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?“):
This tinkering with clocks is our inheritance from a people obsessed with time. Clocks spread rapidly in early America.
[…]
But all these clocks were like many Americans themselves: individual, conforming to their own notions. There were hundreds of local times, each city setting its city hall or courthouse clock to match its own solar noon. When it was 12 p.m. in Chicago, it was 11:50 a.m. in St. Louis and 12:18 p.m. in Detroit. But that wasn’t a problem because local time was all that mattered.
That changed when the railroads began to unify the country. The railroads ran by their own time, which vexed travelers trying to make connections. Many stations had two clocks, one for railroad time and one for local time.
To eliminate the confusion, railroads took it upon themselves in 1883 to divide the country into four time zones, with one standard time within each zone. To resist could mean economic isolation, so at noon on Nov. 18, 1883, Chicagoans had to move their clocks back 9 minutes and 32 seconds. It’s as if the railroads had commanded the sun to stand still, The Chicago Tribune wrote. Louisville was set back almost 18 minutes, and The Louisville Courier-Journal called the change a “compulsory lie.” In a letter to the editor, a reader demanded to know “if anyone has the authority and right to change the city time without the consent of the people?” In an 1884 referendum, three-quarters of voters in Bangor, Me., opposed the 25-minute change to “Philadelphia time.”
One sees the same annoyance with the “compulsory lie” of daylight saving time. When it was being debated in 1916, The Literary Digest saw it as a trick to make “people get up earlier by telling them it is later than it really is.” The Saturday Evening Post asked, in jest, “why not ‘save summer’ by having June begin at the end of February?” And an Arkansas congressman lampooned the time reformers by proposing that we change our thermometers: move the freezing point up 13 degrees and a lot of folks could be tricked into burning less fuel to heat their houses.
We adopted daylight saving time (during World War I), rejected it (after the war), adopted it again (during World War II), and then left it up to the states and localities until 1966, when Congress once more decided it was a national concern. And as much as we complain and point out that it doesn’t make anyone more productive or save any energy, it persists. Almost every state has eight months of it each year and only four months of so-called standard time. As a result, today we rose with the dawn and next week we’ll be eating breakfast in darkness.
Frankly, while awakening when it’s still pitch dark outside is annoying, I’d prefer to just adopt Daylight Savings Time as Standard Time and dispense with the fiddling. Most of us would rather have that extra hour of daylight in the evening rather than the morning.
Seventy years ago at the end of March 1941, the German Afrika Korps attacked British forces around El Agheila, which is now occupied by the Libyan rebels. The Germans would fight the British and Americans fiercely in the desert before General Rommel “The Desert Fox” was forced to capitulate. Can we learn any lessons from 70 years ago about who will come out on time this time in Libya?
Franz-Stefan Gady thinks so and has a fascinating piece at the National Interest on that subject. As he points out, just like the Axis and the Allies were fighting over the old colonial route Via Balbo, a strategic highway that runs east to west, Gaddafi’s forces and the rebels are fighting over the same road today. History teaches that whoever controls the the towns along that route will come out on top. (Apparently, not too many major roads have been built in Libya!) And what will tip the balance on the battlefield? As Gady points out, air power will be key. There is very little protective cover in the Libya desert. Both Montgomery and Rommel believed that control of the air was what mattered: ”If we lose the war in the air we lose the war and we lose it quickly,” said Montgomery.
Be sure to read Gady’s entire piece.
Boston Globe |
Bruins Hope to Repeat History, Begin Another Win Streak on Long Island
NESN.com The last time the Bruins visited Long Island, they began a season-high, seven-game win streak that included their first 6-0-0 road trip since 1972. They'd like to start another such roll there on Friday … Surging Sabres jump into East's seventh slot Sabres Vs. Bruins: Brad Boyes Gives Buffalo 2 Points With Overtime Winner Police open investigation of Chara's hit |
Written by Tomomi Sasaki
Photo from March 11 earthquake in Japan shared by @mitsu_1024 (via wikitree.co.kr)
On Friday, March 11, 2011 at 2:46:23 p.m. local time, an 8.9-magnitude earthquake struck Japan, the largest in recorded history.
Here are some online resources that people are using to get in touch with each other:
- Person Finder from Google
- Facebook page to share info
- Gigazine has an article [ja] with screenshots that teach how to use the emergency messaging service that’s been set up by the phone companies.
Hashtags being used in the Japanese Twittersphere are #sendai and #jishin. #prayforjapan is being used to send prayers in the English Twittersphere.
Many people on Twitter are trying to stay calm and sharing advice, especially based on experience from the Great Hanshin Earthquake or the Chuetsu Earthquake.
【拡散希望】電気屋さんからの忠告！です。 ただ今地震で停電している地帯の方はブレーカーを全て落として下さい。通電されたら小さなブレーカーを一つづつ入れて下さい。漏電ブレーカーが落ちるようでしたら、無理に入れず、電気事業者等に連絡をとって下さい。漏電による火災を防ぎましょう。
Please RT! Advice from electrician: Please shut off the circuit breaker if you're in an area that had power cut off. When the power is back, turn on one by one using the small circuit breakers. If the short-circuit continues, don’t force it, just contact any electric shop for assistance. Try to avoid fire caused by leakage of electricity.
@take23asn 【タンスの下敷きになった人を助ける方法】タンスが頑丈なのは全面と上部、側面だけ。背の面は薄い板でできている。その薄い板を蹴破り、そこからすべての引き出しを抜き取る。そうすれば簡単にタンスを解体できる。
@take23asn “How to save people who got crushed under cabinet : The walls of cabinets which are solid are the front, the top and the side. The back is made with thin board. Kick and break the thin board so that you can pull out all the drawers and dismantle the cabinet easily.
【 緊急 】 手話が必要な方に教えて上げてください。「目で聴くテレビ」でNHKのニュースに手話をつけて放送中。このURLから「緊急災害放送」をクリックしてください。 http://t.co/KQPhc1r #jishin #NHK
[Urgent] Please raise your hand for those who need sign language interpreter. Click the following link http://t.co/KQPhc1r and check out NHK news “Listen with your eyes TV broadcast.”
FMわぃわぃは多言語で地震・災害情報を放送中。インターネットでも聴けます。http://bit.ly/eaV16I%20 在日外国人の皆さんに伝えてください。 #saigai#eqjp #earthquake
FM wai-wai multilanguage channel (simulradio) broadcasts information on earthquake and disaster. You can listen through internet here. http://bit.ly/eaV16I%20 Please pass the message to foreigners in Japan.
iPhoneの電池を少しでも長持ちさせる方法。
1.wifiを切る
2.位置情報サービスを切る
3.通知サービスを切る
4.Bluetoothを切る
5.画面の明るさを一番暗くする
6.余計なアプリを切る
Save iPhone battery 1) kill wifi 2) kill GPS 3) kill push notifications 4) kill Bluetooth 5) Turn down brightness 6) Shut down extraneous apps.
@Tranquil_Dragon in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture posted this screenshot:
@wanchan11 posted an image of the flooded Sendai Port:
Some videos from Tokyo:
Many thanks to the GV Japan Team for coming together during the quaking to collaborate on this article.
